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Hi: being in the GUI, the keyboard suddenly becomes unresponsive and I have no remedy but to press the machine's reset button. I have never observed this failure while in one of text consoles (/dev/ttyN). When booting, the screen first prints data pertaining to the graphics card (Nvidia). Then:

AMIBIOS(c) 2003 American Megatrends, Inc.
P4i65G BIOS P1.00

and line 25 reads:
<big number sequence>-INTEL-P4i6G013-Y2KC

The keyboard is USB. I have it plugged into one of the machine USB jacks.

This has happened under both slackware 12.0 and slackware 14.0 running Xfce 4. Sometimes, unplugging the keyboard and plugging it into another USB jack brings it again to life. One thing can be relevant. In order for the keyboard to be recognized, in the BIOS setup menu, I have to choose 'Legacy USB enabled: yes'. If I don't do this, after quiting the BIOS menu, which takes me to the bootloader (lilo) prompt, the keyboard will not respond. This is all the information I am aware of at this moment. What can possibly be the mystery behind this strange behavior?

I know it's probably a software issue of some kind, as you mentioned that unless Legacy USB support is enabled, it won't work, but I've had more than my fair share of bad hardware...

Does it happen on ALL USB ports on the system, or just those on one header? I had a board once where the ground pin on one USB header somehow became disconnected. Wiggling the plug would work for a while, then it would quit on me. I eventually repaired it, after I did a little investigation. (Not saying yours is hardware related, but maybe?)

Does it happen with all keyboards, or just one? Again, I had a keyboard where some of the internal connections had worked loose.

Are other USB devices similarly affected?

Does the keyboard work under other operating systems/distributions?

I know you've probably been through all these possibilities...I just really have nothing...

Thanks for your post. I have two machines and two keyboards, both of them USB. Let's call them machine mA and machine mX, keyboard kA and keyboard kX. The failure happens with kdb kX connected to mach mX. Mach mX works fine with kdb kA works fine. Mach mA with kbd kX work fine too. Summarizing:

The kind of failure is difficult to diagnose because it is not the type "the kbd is unresponsive from the start". First, up to the present moment, the trouble pair, (mX, kX), has never failed when in a text console (/dev/ttyN, N some digit). Only when in the GUI kbd has stopped responding. Second, when entering the GUI, kdb does respond. It is only after some time using it that it stops responding and then, the only way out is to manualy reset the CPU.

Sometimes the failure includes unresponsiveness of the mouse too. Under Debian 7.4, always under the GUI, both keyboard and mouse stopped responding. As the table above shows, I can't speak of a "guilty" keyboard or a "guilty" machine. Rather, of a guilty machine/keyboard pair. The keyboard is

Does it happen on ALL USB ports on the system, or just those on one header? I had a board once where the ground pin on one USB header somehow became disconnected. Wiggling the plug would work for a while, then it would quit on me. I eventually repaired it, after I did a little investigation. (Not saying yours is hardware related, but maybe?)

I have plugged it on all USB jacks on the rear pannel. I have two more on the front which I did not test.

Quote:

Does it happen with all keyboards, or just one? Again, I had a keyboard where some of the internal connections had worked loose.

As the table shows, only with this one.

Quote:

Are other USB devices similarly affected?

It's the only USB device attached to the machine. The mouse is PS/2.

Quote:

Does the keyboard work under other operating systems/distributions?

Under Debian it's the same problem. But only with the X machine. The A machine with the X keyboard works fine under slackware and debian.

Just out of curiosity I tried it. It seems kind of a cool reset (equivalent to pressing the reset button), because when it reboot fsck began to check the filesystem. But in my case the entire keyboard is dead. No use to press Cntrl-Alt-F1 or Alt+SysRq. I think it could be fixed by a wise option in xorg.conf. Anyways it's kind of an intermitent or aleatory failure. Also, the machine has a very odd issue: When turning it on, I will have no CRT output. The screen will be blank. I must press the reset button and this time I have output on the monitor. However, with another keyboard, the machine, save the cold start issue, works fine. I think the best solution would be to through the USB keyboard to the trash can and buy a PS/2 one. Thanks for your post.

unRaw (take control of keyboard back from X),
tErminate (send SIGTERM to all processes, allowing them to terminate gracefully),
kIll (send SIGKILL to all processes, forcing them to terminate immediately),
Sync (flush data to disk),
Unmount (remount all filesystems read-only),
reBoot.